NEW VARIETIES. 239 



plant breeder of to-day is favored above all his predecessors. 

 Botanists, naturalists, explorers, experts in their profession, 

 are scouring the earth for new varieties. From the equator 

 to the arctics, in civilized, half civilized and in savage lands, 

 on the coast, in the interior, in out-of-the-way places, under 

 all suns, upon all soils, they are searching for new forms of 

 plant life. Moreover, directly or indirectly, these men are 

 all in correspondence with one another. The information 

 which they gather and the specimens which they*collect are at 

 once forwarded to a few great centers, the governmental Ag- 

 ricultural Departments of the world, and these also being 

 in sympathetic relations with one another, the work of the 

 whole army of prospectors and scouts is at once systematized, 

 developed and made common property. It was thus that the 

 little, worthless, but hardy, trifoliate orange of Japan was 

 found and sent to Washington, and thence to Florida, where, 

 by crossing with the orange of that section, it gave birth to 

 the citrange. 



Sometimes these new-found varieties are not wild and worth- 

 less, but in a very good state of development, and need only 

 to be planted and cultivated here in order to become profitable 

 crops. In such cases their value usually arises from their 

 hardihood, and in their ability to resist certain untoward condi- 

 tions which our native plants of an allied kind are unable to 

 withstand. Two or three closely related varieties of wheat, the 

 Kubanka, the Velvet Don and the Yellow Gharnooka, have been 

 imported from among the peasantry of Russia. These wheats 

 are so hard of grain that the ordinary mills of this country 

 cannot grind them, but they have shown themselves so won- 

 derfully insensible to climatic and soil conditions that we have 

 the best authority for believing that they will extend the prof- 



